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The Historic New Orleans Collection

Giants of Jazz

A vibrant painting of a jazz musician playing a trumpet. The silhouette of the musician contrasts against a colorful, abstract background filled with dynamic strokes and splashes of red, yellow, and blue.

Giants of Jazz

Art Posters and Lithographs by Waldemar Świerzy from the Daguillard Collection

April 21 to December 30, 2017

533 Royal Street

Giants of Jazz: Art Posters and Lithographs by Waldemar Świerzy from the Daguillard Collection pays homage to African American titans of jazz and rhythm-and-blues, the 20th-century tradition of Polish poster art and the interplay of musical and visual art.

The display includes 17 larger-than-life works by Polish artist Waldemar Świerzy (1931–2013). Visitors will see renditions of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ray Charles as well as three studies for a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a self-portrait by Świerzy and a poster for the 1988 Jazz Jamboree Festival in Warsaw, Poland.

HNOC acquired the posters, along with several other works by Świerzy, as part of a much larger and diverse acquisition from the prominent immunologist and collector Fritz Daguillard and his wife, Rita Daguillard.

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